A canonical tag is meant to indicate that the page's content is not the primary version of this content, and point to the page with the main version (canonical).​It is an indication to search engines, to advise them to present the canonical version in their search result pages, and not the non-primary, alternate version.

Search engines can ignore canonical tags

Precisely because a canonical tag is "just" an indication (a hint) and not a directive (an instruction that has to be followed, such as those found in a website's robots.txt), search engines can ignored it.

Why would they? First of all, because sometimes, canonical tags are implemented the wrong way. Then, search engines can find out that signals sent by canonical tags are inconsistent with other, more trustworthy signals.

Or, the canonical information is outweighed by other considerations.

​Whatever the reasons, if you are focusing your SEO work on canonical pages while, and if in the mean time, search engines are preferring some non-canonical pages, you are wasting time and are not achieving results.

Comments are closed.

Author

My name is Chris Parker. Based in Kent, we provide digital marketing
services for businesses across Kent and beyond. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google +.I come from a broad
media background covering over 20 years and have over 12 years online marketing experience - including search engine marketing - incorporating pay per click management(PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO). During that period I have helped businesses, small and large, to come to terms with the digital channel and the exciting online marketing opportunities that it has provided.